"There!" said Kitty, pointing her partner to a particular spot on the terrace. "I think that will do. Where are the castanets, I wonder?" "Kitty!" said a voice behind her. Ashe emerged from the drawing-room. "Kitty, please! It is nearly midnight. Everybody is tired--and you yourself must be worn out! Say good-night, and let us all go to bed." She turned. Willam's voice was low, but peremptory. She shook back her hair from her temples and neck, with the gesture he had learned to dread. "Nobody's tired--and nobody wants to go to bed. Please stand out of the way, William. I want plenty of room for my steps." And she began pirouetting, as though to try the capacities of the space, humming to herself. "Helston--this must be, please, for another night," said Ashe, resolutely, in the young man's ear. "Lady Kitty is much too tired." Then to Lady Edith, and the Dean--"Lady Edith, it would be very kind of you to persuade my wife to go to bed. She never knows when she is done!" Lady Edith warmly acquiesced, and, hurrying up to Kitty, she tried to persuade her in soft, caressing phrases. "I stand on my rights!" said the Dean, following her. "If my hostess is used up to-night, there'll be no hostess for me to-morrow." Kitty looked at them all, silent--her head bending forward, a curious _méchant_ look in the eyes that shone beneath the slightly frowning brows. Meanwhile, by her previous order, a footman had brought out two silver lamps and placed them on a small table a little way behind her. Whether it was from some instinctive sense of the beauty of the small figure in the slender, floating dress under the deep blue of the night sky and amid the romantic shadows and lights of the terrace--or from some divination of things significant and hidden--it would be hard to say; but the group of spectators had fallen back a little from Kitty, so that she stood alone, a picture lit from the left by the lamps just brought in. The Dean looked at her--troubled by her wild aspect and the evident conflict between her and Ashe. Then an idea flashed into his mind, filled always, like that of an innocent child, with the images of poetry and romance. "One moment!" he said, raising his hand. "Lady Kitty, you spoil us! After amusing us all day, now you would dance for us all night. But your guests won't let you! We love you too well, and we want a bit of you left for to-morrow. Never mind! You offered us a dance--you bring us a vision--and a poem!--Friends!" He turned to those crowding round him, his white hair glistening in the lamplight, his delicate face, so old and yet so eager, the smile on his kind lips, and all the details of his Dean's dress--apron and knee-breeches, slender legs and silver buckles--thrown out in sharp relief upon the dark....